HANOVER COUNTY, Va. -- A group of voters in Hanover County are raising questions about a sitting Virginia delegate and whether he truly resides in the district he was just elected to represent.
Due to legislative redistricting, state lawmakers across the Commonwealth have faced similar scrutiny, although experts said proving cases like this is very difficult.
Colleen Berry moved to just outside of Ashland not long ago and was aware that redistricting was altering the legislative lines near the Center of the Universe. Several months ago, she and several other voters began questioning whether Del. Buddy Fowler (R) actually resides inside the lines of the new district he was just elected to represent.
Fowler represented the old House District 55 for several years and won in new House District 59 by a comfortable margin on Election Night.
"We realized, oh, he’s running in the 59th primary did he move?” Berry said of when the first noticed something might be amiss. "If you’re going to create laws, then you should absolutely follow them.”
“He was using his district office address as his new home residence," Berry said.
Fowler's family owns a house and land east of Ashland, according to property records, which was within the borders of old House District 55 but is now just outside the lines of the new House District 59.
On his campaign organization paperwork, Fowler lists a Beaverdam address within District 59 as his residence and where he is registered to vote, records show.
That Beaverdam address is also listed as Fowler's District office and records show someone with the same name as his legislative aid owns the property.
As recently as this February, Fowler made a political donation to a federal campaign that lists the Ashland address as his home address, records show.
There is nothing that prevents lawmakers from owning or renting multiple properties, but state law requires members of the General Assembly to reside within the district they represent, although there are few specifics about the definition of "resident."
Multiple attempts to reach Fowler were unsuccessful at this point. He previously had promised to move into the new district.
Hanover voters reached out to CBS 6 about this situation after several Chesterfield voters submitted a court challenge to Sen. Ghazala Hashmi's win in Senate District 15, claiming she did not live in the apartment she rented within her new district.
Previously, both legal and political experts said it is very difficult to actually prove a lawmaker does not live at the address they list as their residence and said challenges will likely not be successful.
“It’s always difficult to prove a negative," Berry said.
She and a few other voters have asked for a special prosecutor to look into the Fowler situation. Still, if multiple state lawmakers in from different parties in different regions of Virginia are all facing similar residency scrutiny, Berry said there is likely a bigger issue that needs to be addressed.
"It’s kind of like, well, do we have a law or do we not have a law? And if we have a law, maybe it needs to be changed to be clearer so we don’t have any murkiness about this going forward in future elections," she said. "I don’t know who would bring a law like that to the table because it seems to benefit the people in power to say that they live in whatever district they want to run in.”
CBS6 contacted both the Hanover Sheriff's Office and Commonwealth Attorney's office to see if they have looked into the residency questions.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office said the Commonwealth's Attorney asked them to investigate after they received a complaint from voters. The Sheriff's Office turned over documentation about this to the Commonwealth's Attorney.
A call to the Commonwealth Attorney's office has not been returned yet.
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