Alarmed by cuts already made to federal agencies that help safeguard elections, and fearful that more could be coming, a bipartisan group of the nation’s top state election officials has appealed to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, for help.
In a rare move, the ordinarily restrained National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to Ms. Noem, the former South Dakota governor, on Friday asking that critical election programs and protections be spared during an upcoming agency review.
Among the programs the group singled out for preservation were those aimed at assessing the physical security of voting locations and election offices, shoring up cybersecurity for election offices, sharing classified intelligence on foreign threats to elections and responding to attacks like ransomware.
“We favor continuity of the core resources,” the secretaries said, while also asking Ms. Noem to discuss with them any “potential changes or impacts to election security-related services before making a final decision.”
Last week, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had already reassigned several dozen officials working on foreign interference in U.S. elections at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forced out others at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The letter’s tepid wording was unsurprising: The association, comprising 40 secretaries of state belonging to both parties, is often loath to wade into any debate that could appear political. But election officials nationwide have expressed concern and confusion about the administration’s moves.
The letter was signed by the association’s president, Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state in Minnesota, and Michael Watson, the group’s president-elect, the Republican secretary of state in Mississippi. Mr. Watson could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Simon said in an interview that it reflected a “broad consensus” that cuts could “put the secretaries of state and those who run elections at a real disadvantage in light of the threats that we know are out there.”
Mr. Simon noted that the homeland security programs were created in response to efforts by foreign governments to hack into American election systems in 2016. Among them is “penetration testing,” in which federal government experts try to hack or break into state election systems to identify any vulnerabilities and tie it to intelligence reports of foreign threats.
“This is very much a national security issue, and it’s not just the opinion of secretaries of state,” he said. “That’s the opinion of the federal government across multiple administrations now.”
While the ramifications of the changes at the F.B.I. are not yet fully known, other secretaries of state said they worried that those could threaten their personal safety.
Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state and a Democrat, said she had worked closely with federal partners over the past four years as her office was flooded with death threats against her.
“Four people have been prosecuted for threatening my life, three by the F.B.I.,” she said, adding that nearly 20 cases of threats against her were under active investigation recently: “Where is that work going, the work to protect election officials?”
