When her parents took Sophiana James to Olympia Thursday morning on her 10th birthday, they told her they were going on a field trip to tour the Capitol. She suspected nothing when they took her to the last stop, the Office of Secretary of State.

When Sophiana, her parents, Andrew and Christine James, and her teacher, David Smith, were escorted into Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office, she may have figured something was up.

Reed greeted the visitors and then gave the homeschool student from Sammamish a special birthday surprise when he told her she had been chosen as this year’s winner of the Voters’ Pamphlet Kids’ Art Contest. (She and Reed are pictured below holding her winning artwork.)

“I was?” she exclaimed with a big smile as her proud parents and teacher looked on.

Sophiana’s artwork was selected out of more than 700 entries. This year’s contest theme was “If I Could Vote…” The winning art will be featured in the statewide Voters’ Pamphlet for the General Election this fall. The 2012 pamphlet will be mailed out in mid-October. In 2011, 3.5 million copies were mailed out statewide.