FEC Hacked? Campaign-finance Reporting System Goes Offline Amid Record Election Spending

As if the billions of dollars pouring into American elections weren’t already difficult enough to track, suspected hackers are now being blamed for disrupting the federal system designed to tell voters who’s financing their candidates.

Reuters reported Tuesday that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shut down its electronic filing system Monday night after discovering an attempted cyberattack. The outage prevents political committees from submitting their latest spending reports, just days before the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history.

The timing raises troubling questions. Who targeted the agency, and what were they seeking? When will the system be restored? And how much political spending could remain undisclosed before Election Day?

The Report

According to Reuters, the FEC discovered a suspected hacking attempt shortly before its electronic filing system went offline.

An FEC electronic filings officer alerted several campaign finance compliance firms late Monday:

We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web facing services.

The agency subsequently confirmed:

At this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service.

The outage began around 10:00 p.m. Eastern on October 26. By Tuesday evening, the agency had identified the problem but had not restored service.

Its official status page reported:

The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

At 3:48 p.m. on Tuesday, the FEC posted on X that it was continuing efforts to restore service.

As of Wednesday morning, the incident remained unresolved. The FEC has not identified the suspected attackers or disclosed whether they accessed sensitive information.

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) referred Reuters’ inquiries to the FEC.

The FEC does not administer elections, so the disruption does not affect voting machines, ballot counting, or Americans’ ability to cast ballots. It does, however, interfere with the public’s ability to monitor political money.

What Does the FEC Do?

Congress created the Federal Election Commission through legislation enacted in 1974, following the Watergate scandal and revelations about secret political contributions. The agency began operating in 1975.

The FEC administers and enforces federal campaign finance laws. It monitors political fundraising and spending, enforces contribution limits, and makes financial disclosures available to the public.

Candidates, political parties, and political action committees must report certain contributions and expenditures. These filings help voters identify who’s financing federal elections.

Disclosure becomes especially important during the final weeks of a campaign.

Under FEC rules, independent expenditures of $10,000 or more in a particular race generally trigger reporting within 48 hours outside the final 19 days before an election.

During those final 19 days, expenditures of $1,000 or more must be reported within 24 hours.

These reports identify who received payments, how much was spent, and which candidates the spending supported or opposed.

The shutdown has interrupted this critical disclosure process.

Steven Mele, president and CEO of political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters:

I’ve never seen this in 26 years.

Brendan Glavin, research director at the nonpartisan watchdog OpenSecrets, stressed the seriousness of the disruption:

It’s a big deal.

He explained:

These are the key ​reports that tell us what is happening…. In the last days of the election this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money’s being ​spent.

Previously filed reports remain searchable. But the outage prevents the public from accessing newly submitted disclosures.

Record Spending

The suspected cyberattack comes amid an unprecedented flood of political money.

According to the AdImpact figures quoted by The Wrap, political advertising expenditures and future reservations reached $11.21 billion by October 26.

That exceeds the $11.2 billion recorded during the entire 2024 election cycle, including the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

OpenSecrets’ Glavin told Reuters that super PACs and dark money organizations had spent an average of more than $50 million daily during the previous week. On October 20 alone, they reported more than $250 million in expenditures.

A new Public Citizen analysis of the FEC records, published Tuesday, reveals just how concentrated that money has become:

More than 500 donors contributed $1 million or more to super PACs in 2026, amounting to $4.2 billion, more than 70 percent of the money raised.

Donations of $1 million or more accounted for 94 percent of the Senate Leadership Fund’s receipts, 90 percent of MAGA Inc.’s, and 80 percent of the Senate Majority PAC’s.

Even contributions of $20,000 or more accounted for more than 85 percent of all super PAC money raised, according to Public Citizen.

The spending reflects a campaign-finance system operating far beyond traditional contribution limits.

Under FEC rules, super PACs may accept unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals, corporations, and labor organizations. They can also spend unlimited amounts supporting or opposing candidates, provided they comply with restrictions on coordination with campaigns.

So-called dark money groups can further obscure the sources of political financing. Certain nonprofit organizations can participate in political activity without publicly identifying all their donors.

The result is a system in which a relatively small circle of wealthy interests can spend billions shaping elections, while voters struggle to discover who’s financing the political messages they see.

The current disruption aggravates the problem.

Biggest Donors

The influence of wealthy donors becomes especially apparent when examining the money behind the 2026 midterms.

An October 23 Washington Post analysis found that just 50 of the largest contributors, including individuals and organizations, had donated more than $2.77 billion to influence the elections.

Republican-aligned contributors accounted for $1.67 billion. Democratic-aligned contributors supplied $832 million. Another $264 million went to bipartisan and special-interest groups.

The largest individual donors included:

Republican-aligned donors:

• Elon Musk, $446 million: The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive and world’s richest man, who operates America PAC.
• Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, $150 million: The billionaire owners of Uline, a Wisconsin-based shipping and packaging supply company.
• Jeff and Janine Yass, $110 million: Jeff Yass cofounded Susquehanna International Group, a major trading firm with investments including TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.
• Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, $92.2 million: The Silicon Valley billionaires behind Andreessen Horowitz, a major venture-capital firm investing in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
• Miriam Adelson, $67.6 million: The billionaire widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, majority shareholder of Las Vegas Sands, and prominent Zionist activist and supporter of pro-Israel causes; megadonor to Donald Trump.

Other prominent Republican donors include billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna.

Democratic-aligned donors:

• George Soros, $102 million: The billionaire financier and founder of the Open Society Foundations, which funds political advocacy and civil society organizations worldwide.
• Michael Bloomberg, $84.2 million: The founder of Bloomberg LP, former New York City mayor, and major funder of gun-control and climate initiatives.
• Reid Hoffman and Michelle Yee, $41.2 million: Hoffman cofounded LinkedIn and became a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
• Stephen Mandel, $35.1 million: The billionaire founder of Lone Pine Capital, a major American hedge fund.

Among other major donors are media executive Fred Eychaner, billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen and his wife, Lyna Lam, and philanthropist Deborah Simon, an heir to the Simon Property Group real estate fortune.

More Money, Less Transparency

Most of these contributions went to political committees rather than directly to candidates.

Other major players included cryptocurrency companies Coinbase, Ripple, and Crypto.com; the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project; the Koch network; sports betting giant DraftKings; and political groups backed by the artificial intelligence industry.

Nonprofit political organizations also funneled hundreds of millions into the elections. According to The Washington Post, Republican-aligned One Nation contributed $133 million, while Democratic-aligned Majority Forward and House Majority Forward supplied $102 million and $93.7 million, respectively.

The picture changes when examining candidates’ own fundraising. According to FEC data compiled by The Open Count, Democratic House and Senate candidates raised $2.36 billion through September 30, compared with $1.58 billion for Republicans.

Republican-aligned contributors therefore dominated among the largest donors, while Democratic candidates led in direct fundraising. The figures represent different categories and cannot simply be added together. But the larger picture is unmistakable: Both parties are awash in money from wealthy interests.

That raises an obvious question: How much political influence can ordinary Americans exercise when a relatively small circle of billionaires and powerful organizations bankrolls the political system? At the same time, public opposition to big money in politics is overwhelming and crosses party lines.

Now, the suspected cyberattack threatens to undermine even the limited transparency the campaign-finance system provides.

The FEC has not linked the attempted breach to either party or any donor. Nor has it established that attackers successfully stole or altered campaign-finance records.

But the timing could hardly be worse. As political spending reaches record levels, the federal system meant to expose who pays for political influence has gone offline.

Americans can still vote on November 3. Whether they will know who’s paying to influence their choices is another question.