if you believe you can write robust C programs, you shouldn't use Perl programs.

It's not that it's impossible to write robust C programs, but that it's difficult. Just by using Perl (or another higher-level language), you eliminate an entire class of possible attacks: buffer overflows.

Sidestepping the fact that 99% of the voting population won't have the skills to understand the program . . .

I don't have the mathmatical background to anaylize the security of any given cryptographic algorithm. I still want the algorithms to be made public as a way of keeping the orginaters honest.

. . . don't have the garantee that the program you have been given is the actual program that's running the voting machines.

And that's the ultimate problem.

There's no way to know that if you press the button for candidate A your vote is actually counted for candidate A, and only once.

There are many cryptographic voting systems, where the voter can verify that their vote went to the choice they want. However, most of them rely on a central, trusted authority. The decentralized ones I've seen are unscalable to more than a handful of people.