WASHINGTON — The Federal Election Commission restored its electronic filing system on Wednesday afternoon, ending an outage that lasted nearly two days, began after a reported attempt to breach the agency’s systems, and blocked the rapid campaign-money disclosures due in the final stretch before the midterm elections.
The commission said at 4:50 p.m. that “the electronic filing system is available,” adding that a fix had been implemented and the results were being monitored. By Wednesday evening, its status page showed electronic filing, the submission system, the online web forms and the vendor tools back to operational. One piece remained degraded at first: the FECfile+ application was still listed in partial outage, before it too was moved to operational later on Wednesday evening.
The system went down late Monday. Reuters reported that the FEC’s electronic filing officer told compliance firms in a Monday night email, “We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems,” and that the agency’s web-facing services were shut down in response. The commission’s public statement confirms only the outage itself: “At this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service.” The FEC has not publicly confirmed an attempted intrusion. There is no evidence that any data was accessed or taken, and no indication of who was behind the attempt.
The timing is what made the outage consequential. Between October 15 and November 1, groups that make independent expenditures of $1,000 or more must report them within 24 hours, and candidates must file 48-hour notices of contributions of $1,000 or more received in the final stretch of the campaign. None of those filings could be submitted while the system was down. Reports filed before the outage remained searchable throughout, and the FEC’s campaign finance data and openFEC API stayed up.
The money moving in this window is substantial. Brendan Glavin, research director at OpenSecrets, said outside groups spent an average of more than $50 million a day in the week before the outage, with more than $250 million reported on October 20 alone. “I’ve never seen this in 26 years,” Steven Mele, president of the compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters.
The filing deadlines themselves are set by law, and the FEC cannot move them. But in an email to filers reported by Politico, the agency said it would not fine campaigns for filings missed during the outage, provided the reports are submitted within 24 hours after the system comes back — a window that opened on Wednesday afternoon.
The outage did not touch the voting process. The FEC oversees campaign finance disclosure; it does not administer elections or count ballots, which are run by states and localities. Nothing in the incident affects voters’ ability to cast ballots on November 3, when the elections will decide control of Congress for the next two years.
The filings blocked since Monday are now expected to land in a rush, and until they do, money spent in the campaign’s final week remains partly invisible to voters. The commission still has not said publicly whether the shutdown was caused by an attempted intrusion. Zark News will update this story if it does.
Update, Oct. 29: The FEC status page now lists every system as operational, including the FECfile+ application. It changed FECfile+ from partial outage to operational at 5:32 p.m. on Wednesday, and at 7:10 p.m. it said: “FECfile+ is available. A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.” Both outage incidents are still listed as monitoring, not resolved. The FEC did not reply to Zark News questions by 10 a.m. on Thursday.
Reporting note: Sources for this story are the FEC’s status page and public statements of October 26–28, 2026, including its October 28 restoration updates; Reuters’ October 27 reporting on the internal FEC email, the agency’s statement and the compliance industry’s response; Politico’s reporting of the FEC’s email to filers on penalties; and OpenSecrets. The FEC has not publicly confirmed an attempted breach; its statements address the outage and the restoration only.
