Looking for a better solution

[eluser]sybrex[/eluser]
I have four tables in my database (simplified them a little):

Code:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `login` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
)

CREATE TABLE `posts` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `author` int(11) NOT NULL,  
  `title` varchar(255) NOT NULL,  
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)  
)

CREATE TABLE `comments` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `post` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `comment` text NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
)

CREATE TABLE `votes` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `post_type` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
  `post_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `user_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `vote` tinyint(1) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
)

Field post_type = 0 if it is a vote for a post, 1 - a vote for comment.
User can vote only once for post and for comment and is not allowed to vote for his own posts and comments.

I am making the array of comments to the posts to display them in the view later:

Code:

$comments = array(
            'id' => comment_id,
            'user' => comment_author,
            'text' => comment_body,
            'can_vote' => TRUE/FALSE if the logined user can vote for this comment);

So, I'm looking for a better solution:

1) Get all votes of specified user in the $votes = array(comment1_ID, comment2_ID, ...) and then do something like this:

Code:

foreach ($comments as $key => $comment)
{
    $comments[$key]['can_vote'] = (in_array($comment['id'], $votes) OR $comment['user'] == $logined_user_id) ? FALSE : TRUE;
}

2) Cycle through all comments and make a query to database for each comment like this:

Code:

foreach ($comments as $key => $comment)
{
    $this->db->where(array('post_type' => 1, 'user_id' => $logined_user_id, 'post_id' => $current_post));
    $n = $this->db->count_all_results('votes');
    $comment['$key']['can_vote'] = $n == 1 ? FALSE : TRUE
}

The table of votes can be really big, and I don't know what variant would be better, faster. If you could propose other variants it would be great too.
Thank you!