It's perfectly fine to have a poll functioning as a counter. The problem with your poll was that you had it set to "one choice" (user has to make one choice out of multiple) and only had one choice. That doen't work. However, setting it to "multiple choice" does allow for having one option.

Please deduct my (test) vote from you end total. I have no easy way of removing it (and no, I don't own a Haunted House either)!