First(?) Rationalist elected to state government

Applause lights, really? :(

While I do agree, you need to be careful with super happy thingies. (They often aren't.)

I participated in politics at one point, getting 198 votes at the Finnish Parliamentary elections and being a board member of the Finnish Pirate Party for a while. I suspect that I would've stood a reasonable chance of eventually getting elected into some office if I'd kept up at it - the Pirates don't look like they'll be elected, but there exists a not-too-horrible more-mainstream party whose members have led me to understand that they'd be glad to have me if I was up for it. But there are a number of reasons for why I chose not to pursue that career option further, including:

• My basic nature is that of a scientist - if there's a problem in society, figure out what needs to be done to solve it, implement that change, and move on to the next problem. In politics, you figure out what needs to be done to solve a problem, and then spend the next several years talking to people and trying to convince them that this is the right answer, having to start the explanation basically from scratch each time you talk with a new person. I found this tedious.
• A preference for at least some level of free speech - it's not particularly uncommon for a politician to make the headlines because they made an ill-considered joke in a Facebook conversation. I don't want to end up in a position where I need to run an extra check on everything that I write in public, to make sure that there's nothing about it that could be used to attack me or my party.
• I dislike talking to strangers on the phone, and journalists asking for interviews tend to rather frequently call you on the phone. I'm also not good at thinking up quick coherent answers to unanticipated questions when under pressure, such as when doing a live debate or interview.

Why don't more people like us (for some conception of "us" that may or may not be coherent) stand for public office?

Because it's unpleasant and not very productive.

If you have any desire for privacy, you would (or should) hesitate to stand for public office for obvious reasons. If you have unconventional views, they are likely to be a problem, you will have to explain and defend them (or hide them). In general, (some) people will be mean to you, including being maliciously mean to you because you're of the enemy tribe and should be trampled into the mud.

And that's just the election part. Provided you made it through, you're likely to find out that the actual power you wield is pretty puny and your role is more akin to that of a cog in a bureaucratic machine. If your positions are sufficiently different from the usual ones, you'll often find yourself in the minory, unable to do anything. You'll face pressure to compromise, to deal, to conform.

Now, if by nature you like the political hustle and bustle, give and take, push and pull, that all is going to be fine. But people "like us" don't.

Practical politics involves a lot of boring, contingent details that don't appeal to people who like more stable truth.

• The uncharismatic official might have gotten there because of connections or some similar factor that you can't just get yourself, even if you're as charismatic as him.
• The uncharismatic official might seem more charismatic to typical people than to you.
• It may be hard for someone else to take his place, because the advantages of incumbency overwhelms the disadvantage he has from not being charismatic.
• Public officials must lie to get into office. STEM backgrounds are unlikely to be willing and/or able to lie efficiently.
• Public officials must do other dishonest things to get into office (backroom deals, for instance), which again engineers might not do.
• Public officials need to compromise between various groups' ideas. STEM people work with things where there is one right answer and the need to compromise is limited, so are not very good at this, especially when one of the sides you're compromising with is outright incorrect.
• Democracy is about doing what your constituents want. A STEM person who wants something different than his constituents won't get elected. This is still true if the STEM person wants it because he is more educated or more rational--democracy is about doing what the people want, not about trying to be better than them.

I think there a case to be made for more people of this community to run for office.

On the other hand there things are often harder than they appear from the outside.

There is a secret undercurrent of heavily politically-active people on Less Wrong who don't discuss it because of prevailing mind-killer social norms

Or who participate on LW under a nickname and don't want their LW account to read by their political enemies when an election comes up. To the extend that might be the case there's nothing to be gained by outing individuals. Attendance lists of LW events also shouldn't be public to get such a hypothetical person into trouble.

I've heard that atheists absolutely cannot be elected in the US, and people "like us" have a far higher proportion of atheists than the general US population.

• Certain personality traits are correlated with enjoying or being perceived to be good at "us"-type (adopting the same use of "us" as you) activities and analysis, and anti-correlated with enjoying or being perceived to be good at politics-type activities and analysis? (This may just be a more general and less useful formulation of some of Jiro's suggestions.)

It also takes no shortage of conceit to imagine one knows better than the majority or people. Lots of individuals flit between business and politics--GHW Bush is a major owner of a gold mine where I'm from.* But an honest person isn't going to go into politics, because they understand the fundamental lie doing so requires.

*'Fact, I'd wager the two are strongly correlated--though I'm not privy to correlation data you are.

STEM backgrounds are anti-correlated with public office because:

• voters are prejudiced against them

(probably that only applies in certain countries)

While all your reasons for STEM/rationalist types not to be in politics are very plausible reasons, I'm thinking I should become more politically active, alongside my fiancee. Anyone able to say what one should do in order to get into elected office?

I'd argue that most successful politicians already are highly effective instrumental rationalists when it comes to getting elected and staying in office.

Maybe I am naive here, but I think that calling someone and saying "I am a state representative, and I believe you have the power to improve this country, can I have a talk with you?" will instantly get attention of most people.

Are you familiar with the expression "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" and its connotations?

The job of a person elected to a parliament is to produce new laws and public policy. It's not to simply vote on laws proposed by other people.

The general idea when contacting people should be: "I'm a member of parliament X and I'm writing a law on subject Y. I want to hear from experts on Y to have an informed idea of the subject. I think you are on of the important experts on Y, can I talk to you for you to explain to me your perspective on Y and your ideas of how Y should be legislated?"

When voting on subjects on which you don't have expertise you want to vote with other people in return to them voting for laws you sponsor.

Maybe one could influence malfunctioning government-run services to behave better. If some DMV office or post office is notoriously slow or broken, one could send a letter with official letterhead saying that your constituents are complaining and you'd like to speak to the manager to find out what the problem is. Then actually find out what the problem is, have them work out a plan to solve it, and report back to you on their progress. If necessary, mention that there's currently a big push in the Senate to cut back for poorly-performing services.

That was just the Democratic primary. It doesn't give the vote totals for the general election, but apparently there were 5,364 votes in the general election in the same district in 2012 (oddly close to the total population of the district, which should be about 6,600, since it says there are 3,291 residents per representative, and it's a two-representative district).

Edit: Oh, I think I see what's going on. People can probably vote for two candidates, so the number of voters would be about half the number of votes (or a bit more, if some people only vote for one).