Carrie Jung/KJZZ

A Maricopa County election official runs mail-in ballots through a counting machine in 2016.

The Maricopa County Recorder's Office received more than 1 million mail-in ballots for the 2016 general election — a record for the county.

The office counted roughly 831,000 mail in ballots before stopping the tally to focus on live returns. The ballot tabulation center in downtown Phoenix got approval to begin counting mail in ballots about two weeks ago. It can process up to 100,000 each day, but this year that rate wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the record breaking return.
 
Officials expect another 150,000 mailed ballots will be returned in person today at local polling locations. Those and the nearly 200,000 that did not get counted by this evening will be processed tomorrow and Thursday.

"I think we might be able to have 800,000 tabulated and ready to go in those numbers," County Recorder's Office spokeswoman Elizabeth Bathrolomew said. "And then the remaining 200,000 we’ll obviously continue to tabulate but we won’t continue that today we’ll probably pick back up tomorrow or Thursday."