FEC electronic filing system hit with hours-long outage

The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system has been down for hours on Tuesday, according to a spokesperson who confirmed the agency’s IT teams are working to restore the service.

According to the FEC’s incident update page, the agency said Monday night it is “investigating this issue,” stating the FEC filing system is down. An update shortly after 9:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday said the agency is “continuing to investigate this issue.”

“At this time, we can point to the status update posted to the FEC’s website that the electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill.

The FEC’s website search function used to find campaign donations, recipients and political action committee information is not impacted by the outage.

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 incident comes just over a week until voters across the country will head to the polls for the midterm elections. The FEC’s functions should not impact the electoral process.