How do I inner-join so count doesn't display 1?

[eluser]emily12[/eluser]
[quote author="GrahamDj28" date="1336077671"]Hi,

It all depends on what you want to do and what the table relations are.

So... What is it you want to do?[/quote]

Please look at the first post, I explain that the vote count will always be 1 even though there can be 0 entries for that article. I've heard that using an inner join is the solution to this. I COULD automatically create a new entry that votes the article by the submitter but I want to know how this works instead of cheating