A new election started on Super User this morning. I'm already a moderator on SU, and since the election started, I've noticed a drastic uptick in flags and other activity from certain users who have nominated themselves.
It seems pretty obvious to me that this surge in activity is to get those precious election stats up. Flag count and meta participation are shown directly on the election page, and other stats such as voting and badges are shown on the election stats page.
If users suddenly pile on the flags during the election to get those numbers up, it does two things. First of all, it's not an honest assessment of their contributions over time - they're intentionally skewing the statistics. And secondly, it creates an inordinate amount of work for the current mods.
To keep users honest, I think that the election stats should only show data up through the day before the election started. This would give a more accurate indication of how much a user participates over time, and would remove the incentive for users to go crazy during the election.