FEC electronic filing system back online after multi-day outage

The Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) electronic filing system was restored and online Wednesday afternoon, nearly two days after the system initially went down with little explanation.

In a post on X shortly before 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday, the FEC announced the filing system was “back online and available to filers,” adding work is continuing to restore the search feature for the filing system and the agency’s notification service.

The filing system is used by political committees, candidates, political action and party committees to submit campaign finance and reports online. The filing system outage did not impact the FEC’s website search function to find campaign donation recipients and PAC information.

It is not clear what caused the outage, though Reuters , citing an email, reported the FEC website was targeted by a hacker or hackers.

The agency first reported the outage Monday night and said it was continuing to work to resolve the issue through most of Tuesday. On Tuesday evening, the agency said the issue was “identified” and a fix was being implemented.

The incident comes just under a week until voters across the country will head to the polls for the midterm elections, though the FEC has no role in the voting and election process.

Democratic FEC Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum emphasized this during the outage Tuesday, writing on X , “Louder for those in the back!@FEC ONLY handles campaign finance reports which list raising and spending.”

“We play zero role in administering the election. We don’t receive, maintain, or come close to dealing with voter files, voting machines or voting,” she continued.