US elections watchdog restores filing system after cyberattack clouds last-minute spending
Super PACs and other groups could not file mandatory 24- and 48-hour reports that show how much money they are spending to help or hurt candidates at the polls.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) restored its electronic filing system after it was taken offline for nearly 41 hours to contain a cyberattack that concealed spending from big donors as political donations ramped up in the final days of the midterm elections. Campaign watchdogs expressed alarm as the outage persisted into its third evening, as Super PACs and other groups were unable to file mandatory 24- and 48-hour reports showing their spending.
Campaign finance watchdog Molly White stated that they lacked visibility into last-minute spending when the filing systems were down. The outage occurred at a critical time when daily spending accelerated to its fastest pace in the two-year election cycle. Super PACs and dark money groups spent over $50 million per day the week before the outage, with more than $250 million in spending reported on October 20 alone.
The FEC investigated a problem that caused major outages across its systems that process electronic campaign filings. While the motive for the hacking effort remains unknown, campaign finance experts emphasized that transparency is crucial when large sums of money flood political airwaves in the final days before an election.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
