No matter how the midterm elections go, back in the U.S. today, we can’t complain about the outcome.

We did not vote.

We have explanations … but not excuses.

The first explanation? We live in the United Arab Emirates. It’s quite a drive to the place on Chestnut Avenue in Long Beach where our polling station is located.

More explaining: We haven’t been in the U.S. for more than a year. We weren’t living in an environment where “if you need an absentee ballots” messages come through the local media. We weren’t bombarded by television commercials reminding us of the coming elections.

We knew the elections were coming, but we didn’t process the information, a month or two ago, back when we still had time to say, “hey, we need to get in touch with L.A. Angeles County and get some absentee ballots sent to us.” Which we could have done.

Blah, blah, blah.

We should have known better.

I just now checked on voting at the embassy, here in town. Some countries allow that, here. Voting at the embassy. The Philippines, for example, allows its tens of thousands of expatriates here to vote at its UAE embassy. But no. The information on the U.S. embassy website is quite clear. “You cannot … vote at the embassy.”

We take voting seriously. In fact, I am certain this is the first midterm election I will not be voting in … in my life. And that’s a lot of midterm elections.

Even two years ago, when we were working in Hong Kong, we managed to get absentee ballots and vote, a process I wrote about on this blog. Of course, back then, we had been in California through September, had applied for absentee ballots, had them forwarded to us … and well, it was easier. But we voted from Hong Kong. Yes.

It is a limited consolation that one of our ballots does little more than cancel out the other.

Ultimately, this is about our personal responsibilities as American citizens, even when we are far away from home. And we didn’t take care of business.

And what that means is … since we didn’t vote, we forfeit the right to complain about specific federal legislation. Passed or not passed. We didn’t vote. We didn’t care enough to make it happen.

We have nothing to say about what happens before 2012 when, inshallah, we will vote, no matter where in the world we’re living.