LBREPORT.com notices the following

• As of April 5, the 1st Council district reached and exceeded the number of vote by mail ballots returned (voted) that the 1st district cast in the last citywide election on April 13, 2010. As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, the 1st district has had an increase of roughly 60% more registered voters (as of Mar. 2014, the most recent data available) than in the last citywide election on April 13, 2010. Other Council districts had increases in registered voters ranging from 8.8% to roughly 23.5% since the last citywide election on April 13, 2010.

• The third and fifth Council districts continue to have the largest number of vote by mail returned ballots, although as of April 5, both remain about 800-900 ballots below the total returned in April 2010 (both had voter registration increases of 8.8%.)

Two more delivery dates still remain (Monday April 7 and Tuesday April 8) in which more vote by mail ballots could arrive plus vote by mail ballots turned in at polling places on election day April 8.

City Clerk Larry Herrera separately informs LBREPORT.com that his office initially issued 91,960 vote by mail ballots citywide to permanent vote by mail voters (figure from March, 2014)...but since then has issued an additional 4,530 vote by mail ballots to voters requesting them...for a total of 96,490 vote by mail ballots issued. LBREPORT.com has no breakdown on the Council district breakdown of these figures from our other sources yet.

Our information indicates that 19,561 vote by mail ballots have been returned (voted) as of April 5.

Since April 1 and continuing through April 7, City Clerk staff is canvassing returned vote by mail ballots, a process in which the signature on the ballot envelope is checked/compared with the voter registration signature on file, and if the signatures are deemed to match, the ballot is extracted and separated from its arrival envelope.

State law allows the canvassing process to proceed starting one week before election day. LBREPORT.com has learned that the City Clerk's office retains the vote by mail ballot arrival envelopes, but the canvassing and ballot extraction process effectively precludes future use of the arrival envelopes to reconstruct which ballots they contained. The rationale is to ensure the absolute anonymity of votes.

Vote by mail ballots will be the first ballots machine-tallied on Tuesday, April 8 starting at 8:01 p.m. LBREPORT.com will have those results LIVE on our front page (www.LBREPORT.com), along with other results immediately as we learn them.

(April 3, 2014, 7:33 a.m.) -- LBREPORT.com has obtained data below indicating the number of vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots returned (voted) as of roughly Tuesday April 1 which we have compared to the number of VBM ballots returned (voted) by election day in the last citywide election (April 13, 2010).

LBREPORT.com has previously reported, and includes below, a comparison of the number of registered voters by Council districts as of Mar. 6. 2014 [the most recent figure available via the City Clerk's website] with the number of registered voters in the April 13, 2010 citywide election. [Voter registration data from April 2010 (when odd-numbered Council districts last voted individually) is available on the City Clerk's website, but data for the even numbered districts is a bit harder to find (since even numbered districts didn't have Council elections in 2010); accordingly, we used 2011 voter regstration data which we had in our archives.]

LBREPORT.com obtained the data on VBM ballots returned in the current election cycle via an election strategist who has multiple candidates running for different offices in this election cycle.

As indicated below:

• The 3rd and 5th Council districts continue to eclipse all others in terms of vote by mail ballots returned. However, that diffrence has been narrowed somewhat in the 1st Council district...where (as previously reported by LBREPORT.com) over 7,000 new voters are now on the voter rolls (a roughly 60% increase) since the last citywide election on April 13, 2010. Other Council districts had more modest increases in registered voters (ranging from 8.8% to 23.5%) during this period.

• As of April 1, 2014 the number of vote by mail ballots returned in the 1st Council district amounts to almost the total number of vote by mail ballots cast in the 1st Council district in the April 13, 2010 election.

• Roughly 40% of 1st district vote by mail voters, and a little over 40% of 2nd and 6th district vote by mail voters who have thus far returned ballots in the current election cycle voted in 2010. Those percentages range from 51.5% in the 4th Council district to 64.6% in the 5th district.

The impacts of these changes, plus events in the coming days and "get out the vote" actions on election day, will be seen after 8 p.m. on April 8 when ballots are tallied. LBREPORT.com will provide LIVE results on our front page.