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by Xinhua writers Zhou Xiaozheng, Zhu Lei, Lu Jiafei, Xu Jianmei
PHILADELPHIA, United States, July 27 (Xinhua) -- "I was so happy that I cried. I used to ask my God to let me live so I can see this," 102-year-old Geraldine Emmett kept telling reporters who lined up for brief interviews with her on Tuesday.
Just an hour ago, in a state-by-state roll call, the retired educator from Arizona, a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, announced that Democrats in her state had awarded Hillary Clinton 51 of their total 85 votes.
When the roll call ended, Clinton, the former U.S. first lady and secretary of state, officially won her party's nomination for the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first woman ever nominated for U.S. president by a major political party.
"When I was young, I never dreamed to see a woman become the president of the United States someday," recalled Emmett. The white-haired lady still remembers when women first got to vote in America.
"When I was about 9 years old, Arizona passed the law that women could vote for the first time ever. My mother and I, we were so happy," she said cheerfully.
The second night of the four-day Democratic National Convention was also a moment Clinton's campaign sought to heal the deep wounds in the Democratic Party after a bruising primary season fighting off challenger Bernie Sanders.
After South Dakota cast the decisive 15 votes putting Clinton over the threshold of 2,383 delegates required to clinch the nomination, Sanders made a motion to bring the party's presidential race to a close and formally nominated Clinton.
"Madam chair, I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules. I move that all votes, all votes cast by delegates, be reflected in the official record, and I move that Hillary Clinton be selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party for president of the United States," he said.
The convention burst into cheers as a sea of delegates waved signs with "Love Trumps Hate" logo, some falling into hugs and tears. But no sooner had an emotional Sanders left the convention than a group of about 100 angry and disheartened delegates chanted "Walkout! Walkout!" and stormed into the media pavilion.
Their abrupt walkout caught police officers off guard although tight security measures have preventing pro-Sanders protesters from swarming into the national convention in the wake of a new emails leak scandal plaguing the Democratic Party.
Nearly 20,000 emails leaked on Friday from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) showed that party officials who were supposed to remain neutral during the primary contest grew increasingly agitated with Sanders and his campaign. They even floated ideas to sabotage his candidacy.
Locked in arms, the protesters staged a sit-in protest in the temporarily pitched media tent, holding posters of "Bernie or Bust" and "DNC, You're Fired," and chanting "United together! No TPP! This is for Democracy." About half of the protesters wore a seal on their mouths, with letters of "Silenced by the DNC" written on it.
"We are taken advantage of by the system. We know there is election fraud in some states and it's been ignored," said Caitlin Glidewell, a 20-year-old alternate delegate from the state of Colorado, weeping.
Michelle McFadden-DiNicola, a New Jersey delegate for Sanders, said: "We are here to give voice to those voters and those other people in our country that were silenced in the primary."
"Unfortunately, I don't think many Americans are surprised" by the email scandal, which forced DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, she said.
Sanders' supporters have long complained that the use of superdelegates and other ways in the primary nomination process were rigged against their champion of "political revolution."
With signature calls for free college tuition for all, universal health care and a hike of the federal minimum wage to 15 U.S. dollars per hour, Sanders has galvanized millions of Democrats throughout his hard-fought primary campaign with Clinton.
"Because of our complacency, we will probably wind up with either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. It's unfortunate that we are not angrier about being silenced," McFadden-DiNicola said with a Sanders headband.
"I don't know what I would do in November ... But I do know that we need to keep rather than party unity in focus, we need to keep our country unity in our focus. And I can tell you now that I will not vote for Donald Trump," she said.
