Sorry, I can't provide you with a valid answer to your direct question, but let me at least suggest a few things related to this:

Also, does anyone know of a way I can save state while a person is outside of a CGI page?

I have looked at the CGI::Persistent before and think that it may be worth your consideration. Simply put, it allows you to store client state on your server (inside data files). You simply have to tie this 'state data' to a session id of your user. The way I did it was assign a unique session id to new clients (say, right after they are successfully signed in) and save that id in a cookie on their side. On the server side, you create a new CGI::Persistent object to store this client's state. Whenever a user returns to your page, you simply look up his/her session id cookie value and use it to refer to earlier saved state data(using the same CGI::Persistent object).

Note: where is your $redirect variable set in the code? You call your checkCookies() in void context althought the sub returns a value. Shouldn't you save it in your $redirect variable?

"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." -- Confession of Faith