The mandatory, government imposed four-day holiday started today and as a result, the streets are virtually empty. The silence lends an added eeriness to the question we're all asking right now - how far will the insurgents go to sabotage tomorrow's vote.

The only vehicles on the wide boulevards of Baghdad are police cruisers - not even U.S. troop convoys are patrolling on this final day before the crucial referendum. Iraqi police and soldiers will be the primary security for the weekend vote, safeguarding polling stations, with American soldiers intervening only as a last resort.

It was the same story in January when I was last in Baghdad covering Iraq's first democratic election. In fact, this feels a bit like Groundhog Day. Nothing seems to have changed except perhaps the fact that there's more burned out cars and bombed out buildings. Since that election, suicide bombings have dramatically increased and the signs are obvious and everywhere.

"Secure areas" like Baghdad's Green Zone have been further fortified against attacks. We went through eight checkpoints, were frisked and our bags searched each time, just to walk the half kilometre from the street into the building. The guards are jumpy and so are the sniffer dogs as a result tempers flare in a heartbeat.

The chat among the U.S. troops inside the Convention Centre centres around the number of rockets they'd heard throughout the night - launched in their direction. It's a conversation that has changed little since the war started.

On the outside, this increased fear of attack seems to have forced people into a self-imposed house arrest. Even yesterday – which would normally have been busy before the Muslim holy day - was quiet accept for the haunting call to prayer.

The first time I was here, two years ago, we travelled freely, no flak jackets, no armoured car. Streets were laden with people and consumer products, televisions, generators, air conditioners. We walked around, interviewed people, went to restaurants, shops and markets - always on alert, but never really sidelined by security concerns.

That's all gone. Now the idea of just driving around, showing up somewhere unannounced, "trolling for a story", is inconceivable. Every move is planned, Majid, our Iraqi fixer checks out our destination before we even step foot off the compound.

Even under these restrictive conditions though, the majority of people we've spoken to are again determined to vote in the referendum tomorrow. They didn't let violence stop them last time and vow to repeat that long walk to the polling stations on Saturday. We'll see.

Most people seem resigned to the fact that this draft constitution, in the short term at least, will do little to stem the violence permeating every facet of life. It may eventually lead to seemingly simple things like electricity, clean water, mail service, jobs (all things that elude them at present).

But Iraqis see the ballot as a promissory note. The exercise is exhausting but the idea that democracy here is still too celebrated for cynicism.