Hackers have targeted the U.S. Federal Election Commission’s website, according to a new report from Reuters. The FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline, which may delay the filing of reports by political groups that are required to disclose their donors.
The FEC has no role in administering elections, which are run by the states, meaning you don’t need to worry about any vote tallies being altered in the lead up to next week’s midterm elections on Nov. 3. But it does mean that voters will likely have less information about the spending done by super PACs in the final days of the election.
The filing system first went down on Monday night around 10:15 p.m. ET, according to the FEC status page. If you attempt to visit the public-facing FEC portal to file reports, users are greeted with a page that simply reads: “504 Gateway Time-out.”
Reached for comment over email, FEC spokesperson Myles Martin told Gizmodo, “our IT staff are actively working to restore service.” It’s unclear when service may be restored.
As Reuters notes, the 2026 midterms are the most expensive election cycle in U.S. history, with about $11.21 billion spent on ads alone. That’s slightly higher than the total spending in 2024, which amounted to $11.2 billion. Super PACs allow wealthy people to dump an enormous amount of money into American elections and the ruling class has been happy to put its finger on the scales.
Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, has spent at least $445 million to help Republicans in this cycle, surpassing the amount of money he spent in 2024 to help put President Donald Trump back into power. That money buys power and influence, as we saw when Musk ransacked the federal government with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in 2025.
The Tesla CEO took a chainsaw to the government, helping purge an estimated 300,000 workers and dismantle foreign aid programs like USAID. Musk also cut countless government programs while preserving the contracts that he benefited from, such as the government’s spending on SpaceX.
