How can we prevent distortion of the bitcoin exchange rate? Is there anything within the structure of bitcoin exchanges to prevent bitcoin price distortion with multiple accounts controlled by one person?

I have seen stocks with similar levels of liquidity be manipulated in price with about five accounts. Each buying and selling to and from each other, to get the price to the most favorable place so that one account with much more capital can take advantage of the price distortion, and buy or sell into the new optimism (more volume when price is high because of new market participants). You can read great detail about this in SEC emergency injunction orders, as they go after people that do this (after the fact though). Some stock promoters are the main perpetrators.

The advantage with bitcoins is that it is not regulated by the Securities Act, with the transparency about how to do this detailed by judicial remedies against those that were under the jurisdiction of the Securities Act. 

Given that there are so many bitcoin exchanges, would anything such as the technical structure of bitcoin, the exchanges or bitcoin specific market forces prevent someone from doing this with a series of trading accounts, especially across the more illiquid exchanges?
There is no single price for a Bitcoin.  There are prices at various exchange markets at any point in time.

Since some exchanges have no requirement that every account has identity verified then there is no way for the exchange to know an account is controlled by another party.

Today's exchanges have no mechnism to prevent what you describe.