Americans abroad do get to vote in elections (state and federal).

Note that you only have to pay any federal income tax if you’re earning somewhere above $100,000/year and the taxes in your country of residence are lower than the federal taxes you’d owe, and then you have to pay the difference. So basically fairly well off expats on the Middle East. Almost everyone else is either not earning enough, or is paying more tax in their country of residence than they’d owe Uncle Sam so don’t have to cough up any extra.

There are other asinine things though - you still have to file your taxes, which is a massive PITA from overseas as none of the info you get from your employer is formatted for US taxes, and things like retirement funds are also subject to US taxes (again with the $100k/year threshold. Banking can also be a pain as the U.S. have massive reporting requirements for US account holders that a lot of overseas banks just don’t want to deal with so don’t accept US citizens as customers. Basically the US government views all its overseas citizens as though they’re billionaires trying to hide vast fortunes, rather than the mostly very ordinary folks that they are.