The reality is that the Lords' strength lies in the fact that no single party has overall control – a feature that most forms of election would preserve.
As the Demos report observes, "Overall, the disfranchisement of voters through antiquated voting systems, errors, mismanagement of registration bases, and intimidation or harassment is a far bigger problem today than traditional forms of election fraud".
There were also numerous reports of foreign intervention into state voting systems and other forms of election interference, including the news that Obama reportedly called Putin on the "nuclear phone" to tell Russia to stop meddling.
But for practical purposes, there is only one way the abstract and unknowable threats cited by both candidates can affect this election, and that is through older forms of election scams, listed below.
Meanwhile, the police have begun tracking known gunmen, who are hired by the parties during campaigns to carry out their own form of election monitoring.
Dmitry Gudkov, an MP, warned on Friday that a new form of election trickery had been invented in the provinces, with ballot boxes containing fake votes hidden in the cars of officials who visit the sick and infirm.
Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage, has ruled out entering into any form of election pact with the Conservatives despite fresh calls among Tory backbenchers for a deal to be done.
The 25 seats it is likely to end up with may be few, but these were won despite mass arrests, intimidation and an official ban on any form of election rally or publicity.
Some form of election had always been necessary to succeed to the crown, but, before the great civil war, nearness to the royal blood had been honoured whenever a dynasty failed in the direct line.
Theodore White's "The Making of the President 1960" — he published similar treatments of the 1964, 1968 and 1972 elections — won the Pulitzer Prize, and is widely credited with creating the modern blow-by-blow form of election books, but practitioners haven't precisely followed his lead.
Barry's narrative, his bid for redemption in the form of election to the city's highest office, is a public matter, and it threatens to split the city of Washington along its most obvious and treacherous divides: race, class, and even, as a kind of subtext of both, skin tone.
