IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — County election boards have started counting a record number of absentee ballots in Iowa, racing toward a Tuesday night deadline to have those votes tabulated. Nearly 956,000 people had sent in their ballots by mail, dropped them off at auditor’s offices or voted early in person as of Monday morning. That is more than half of the total turnout in the election, which is expected to exceed 1.6 million.In all 99 counties, bipartisan election boards could begin counting the absentee votes on Monday as allowed by state law. Some were planning to work all day and late into the night before reconvening Tuesday.