The Federal Election Commission shut down its electronic filing system this week after a hacking attempt, leaving candidates, parties and political action committees unable to report campaign donations and spending during a historically expensive advertising cycle.
The agency switched off its web services late Monday because a “bad actor” was attempting to breach its systems, according to an email sent by an F.E.C. official that was obtained by The New York Times. The hack was reported earlier by Reuters.
The system remained down on Wednesday. An F.E.C. spokesman confirmed the outage but declined to say whether a cyberattack had caused the problem. “At this time, the F.E.C.’s electronic filing system is currently offline, and our I.T. staff are actively working to restore service,” the spokesman, Myles Martin, said via email.
The outage left the public in the dark about spending in federal races less than a week before Election Day, days when advertising expenditures typically accelerate before voters go to the polls.
“It’s a serious problem that this information is not being made available to voters right now” while early voting is underway in some states, said Stuart McPhail, director of campaign finance litigation at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog. “Voters are going to vote without the full picture that the law entitles them to.”
In the 20-day window before an election, House and Senate candidates must report donations of $1,000 or more within 48 hours of receiving them, under federal law. PACs and other groups must report certain expenditures of $1,000 or more within 24 hours after they are publicly disseminated.
Filings can be made by paper, but once committees reach thresholds of financial activity, as they often do, they must file everything electronically.
Super PACs and other groups reported a daily average of about $80 million in spending over the last two weeks, according to Brendan Glavin, research director at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan campaign watchdog group. But spending can fluctuate widely day to day. It surpassed $260 million on Oct. 21 alone, he said.
“I’m not aware a situation like this happening in the lead-up to an election,” Mr. Glavin said.
Mr. Martin, the F.E.C. spokesman, pointed to an incident report that said the agency had begun investigating the issue at about 9:30 p.m. on Monday. The report said the agency started putting a fix into place late Tuesday.
The outage did not impact the F.E.C.’s main website, meaning that users could still find information about prior campaign donations, receipts and political action committees — data that could indicate what a candidate might stand for.
But it disrupted disclosures in the final days of what has become the most expensive political advertising cycle ever, according to AdImpact, which monitors ad spending. The firm said that $11.21 billion of ads had been booked or reserved, eclipsing the $11.2 billion that had been spent on the 2024 presidential election cycle.
Steven Mele, president and chief executive of MBA Consulting Group, an accounting firm that works on campaign finance compliance, said that PACs were getting reports ready to file when the F.E.C. filing site comes back online, but that electronic forms were piling up while the system was down.
The F.E.C. and its campaign finance disclosure system were established in 1975 in response to widespread campaign finance abuses and corruption revealed by the Watergate scandal. The agency was intended to ensure that monetary influence on politicians had some guardrails, and that the public could find out how campaigns were funded, Mr. Mele said.
The outage could be a sign that the F.E.C. has not been funded and staffed adequately to prevent and respond to cyberattacks, said Mr. McPhail, the campaign finance expert.
Any problems at the F.E.C. are exacerbated by the fact that just two of its six commissioner seats are filled, leaving the agency without the four members required to form a quorum and take official action, such as launching an investigation and bringing a lawsuit if there appeared to be a violation of law.
Such vacancies have lasted longer under President Trump than in any other presidential administration, Mr. McPhail said. Mr. Trump has been a target in F.E.C. complaints before, but he has been able to evade any kind of penalties, either on the merits of the cases or delays caused by the lack of quorum.
Multiple government sites were recently targeted in breach attempts by artificial intelligence technology. OpenAI said last month that its technology had meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission over the summer.
It was unclear whether A.I. was behind the breach attempt on the F.E.C. this week. The outage does not affect voting systems and the counting of ballots. But watchdog groups said that it should concern voters.
“It underscores the need for robust security in those systems,” said Saurav Ghosh, a campaign finance expert and former F.E.C. attorney.
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