The ballots of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, his wife, and 30,000 others were traced back to the voters who cast them in Harris County, according to Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams.

Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast on Monday about the public records that led to PILF's lawsuit against Harris County.

"I can look up how you voted if you live in Texas. I'm not kidding," Adams said. "I know that sounds completely bonkers. I was a skeptic. Texas does not have a secret ballot because of two things: number one, the early voting centers, and the computers, how you generate a ballot, it's too complicated to do on the show to explain every nook and cranny. But trust me, I didn't believe it, but it's true.

"So if you vote early in Texas, we can look up your ballot. In fact, 30,000 ballots we have available. The governor, his wife, the [former] chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Matt Rinaldi, his ballot was looked up. It is a violation, in our view, of political privacy rights."

The current voting system that Harris County has is the reason ballots can be traced back to the voters who cast them, Adams explained.

"Harris County is one of the places that chose, and that's important, chose to go to this system of voting that lets us look up how people voted. And we're alleging in federal court that there's a violation of our First Amendment rights to association and political privacy," Adams said.

He added that the defendants in the lawsuit make the argument that "there is no such thing as political privacy, that if a state wanted to make your vote public, they could. And we're going to find out, because we briefed it heavily. We're in front of a very good judge in federal court in Harris County in Houston."

Adams also noted that there are "a thousand ways this can be abused -- hiring newspaper reporters. How about that? They allegedly, yeah -- judges, lawyers, priests, college admissions. I mean, you will just start thinking of ways that this is abusive."

In November, PILF filed the lawsuit against Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, since she oversees election administration in the county, and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, because her responsibility is to ensure the county follows state and federal election laws.

“Harris County has implemented a system of voting which permits voters ballots to be traced back to the individual voter,” according to the lawsuit. “To audit elections, Texas’ public disclosure laws make public both the poll books of voting centers and the disclosure of ballots, the combination of which make it possible for anybody to trace certain voters back to their actual ballot.”

“By utilizing the poll books from countywide Vote Centers along with publicly available ballots of specific voters, it is possible to connect specific voters to their individual ballot to learn how they voted in that election,” the lawsuit alleges.

“For example, if voter John Doe, from precinct 1 voted at vote center 1 at 2:15 on the first Tuesday of early voting, a ballot cast at 2:16 from a voter in precinct 1 at vote center 1 is easily traced back to voter John Doe. The poll books record where and when voter John Doe voted. The ballot indicates the time of the vote and precinct to which the voter belongs,” the filing continues.

“Because of the current Texas law requiring public disclosure, certain specific voters’ ballots have already been made available to the public and have been publicly released through various news organizations,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit requests the court require the county to stop “making public voter identifying information from poll books and ballots” and “abstain from viewing information that may lead to the discovery of a voter’s ballot and from identifying to anyone a voter’s vote or ballot.”