It’s still September and there has yet to be a debate but presidential ballots are being cast across Iowa.
Early voting opened on Thursday in the Hawkeye State, the first swing state to allow early in-person voting. Idaho and South Dakota have already started. A total of 32 states and the District of Columbia allow early voting.
In 2008, more than a third of the 1.54 million votes cast in Iowa were cast early, which was slightly above the national average,
Fox News reported. Another increase is expected this time around, even up to 40 percent of votes coming early.
With voting taking place more than five weeks before Election Day, candidates had to make their final pitches to voters. In Iowa, experts predict four in 10 will likely end up voting before Election Day, Fox News reported.
Some voters just wanted to put the election season behind them so they voted early.
"I'm just so sick and tired of the process, and maybe it will cut down the calls," Jane Ommen, 70, a retired University of Iowa clerical worker, told Fox News. She voted for President Barack Obama.
Obama has pulled into the lead in Iowa, which has six electoral votes. Democrats, who have been looking for early votes from party activists to college students to voters who usually favor the party but do not always turn out, have built a nearly 5-1 advantage statewide in the number of absentee ballots requested, Fox News reported.
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