Reuters reported on Oct. 27 that the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) website suffered a hacker attack. In an official statement, the FEC confirmed that one or more unidentified hackers breached its electronic filing system and forced it offline. An FEC electronic filing official said in an internal email sent to campaign compliance firms: "We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result,we'vehadtotemporarily shut down our web-facing services."
The relevant system has been down since around 10 pm on Oct. 26, and IT staff are still working to restore it, with no expected repair time yet. The outage will prevent various organizations from submitting on time the FEC-required mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour expenditure reports. These mandatory disclosure reports are the only way to track the flow of funds in the final stage of an election, and their absence will directly affect voters' right to know.
Notably, this midterm election cycle has become the most expensive in US history, with advertising and reserved spending so far reaching about US$11.21 billion, already surpassing the US$11.2 billion record set in the 2024 election. Over the past week, super PACs and "dark money" groups have spent more than US$50 million per day on average, with more than US$250 million in spending reported on Oct. 20 alone.
Related News:
Midterms 2026｜Democrats set to win the House: Plan to cut Trump's tariffs
Comment