rogue link appearing on node

I'm calling the default vote up down widget from a custom template using

print $vud_widget = $node->content['vud_node_widget_display']['#value'];
unset($node->content['vud_node_widget_display']);
print $vud_widget;

But there is a small blank rogue link showing up in my $links area and for the life of me I cannot see where this is coming from. if I switch to the plain widget this rogue link becomes the vote count which is cool but I'm guessing there shouldn't be a blank link when using the other widgets.

Do you know how I can get rid of it?

???