According to Voting/Experience System, the current value of $NORM, as of 05/12/2004 0007 PDT, is 9.7633. That is, the average node reputation for all nodes created within the past week is 9.7633. That number has been in the nine-ish range for a few weeks at least.

When I joined the Monastery back in August 2003, the average was somewhere around 11.xxx. So at least in the period of time during which I've been a PerlMonk, the notion of "vote inflation" is not supported by fact. If vote inflation were an issue, one would expect to see $NORM growing over time. Instead, at least in the nine months I've been hanging around here, there has been a slight amount of vote deflation.

It might be interesting to see a history of $NORM over the entire lifetime of the Monastery. But at least in the recent past, inflation isn't an issue.