November 8th is finally approaching, and with it, early voting comes too. So far, this election has been a ride for voters across America, and now, voters are heading to the polls to cast their votes for presidents. Starting October 24, the American public is deciding once and for all who the next President will be.

In Harris county, October 24 was one of the busiest days of early voting in county history. Across the county, 67,471 people voted at the polls on opening day along with 61,543 ballots having been mailed in. Together, this creates a turn out of 129,014 citizens having voted in Harris county shattering all previous records bewteen in-person and mail-in ballots and overall votes on opening day of early voting.

Across Texas, this trend continued in other major counties. Dallas and Tarrant counties reported at least 43,000 first day voters each while Travis and Bexar counties had around 30,000 voters apiece. Throughout Texas, counties were regularly breaking voting records in which some claim as the most contested election since the 1800 election between Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Aaron Burr.

The United States supports this trend with over half of total voters casting their ballots on day one. In the battleground state North Carolina, they reported 62 percent voter turnout on the first day while other swing states voted as high 81 percent in Colorado down to 5 percent in Pennsylvania. Across the board, early voting has risen significantly compared to the 2012 election in the 34 states that have reported early voting numbers.

As of Wednesday, Republicans lead the Democrats in returned ballots by 4.7 percent, but when in-person voting opened, the numbers have fluctuated between the Republicans and Democrats with it being as big a margin as 13.9 percent and as small as too minute to tell.

Already, problems have arisen over voting. A man in Harris county voted a straight Republican ticket, but when he checked the ballot, there was not vote for president. The voting administrators were called over and could not answer why this error occurred on his ballot. Along with this, Republicans have been accusing Democrats of voter fraud to gain an advantage in the presidential election.

Overall, as voting season officially begins, early voting has already shown the passion on politics among the American people and confirmed the closeness this election will become. As November 8 comes closer and closer, it is predicted this will only exponentially exacerbate.