Super ugly fix for voting bug: the 'votes_count' counter cache field on 'items' table stopped working, probably b/c of some fixes
that were hacked in to handle the fact that items.item_id was being used as a primary key (instead of items.id) and that was
causing all sorts of other chaos. This fix is ugly as shit, but we need to get it working so that we can get some votes by mid-Feb.
A better fix is to take a step back, relate models the way ActiveRecord wants you to, and set up the counter cache field correctly.