I read a report recently about a laboratory study that was looking at this question, in Checkered Giants. If you are reasonably comfortable with scientific jargon, it made pretty interesting reading, but scientists like to show off their language skills to each other and it can make for rather tough going for the uninitiated.
Basically, what they found was a 1-to-1 correlation; EVERY Charlie in their test group had megacolon, it was just the severity that was different. None of the others, whether solid or broken, had megacolon. A statement was made that megacolon can increase in severity as an animal ages, so just because one doesn't show signs as a youngster doesn't mean it won't as it ages.
In addition to the megacolon, this study found that there are significantly fewer nerves (like, about 25% of the normal number) going to the muscles lining the digestive system in Charlies. These nerves tell the muscles when to contract, without them, food moves sluggishly through the digestive tract. There are also issues with the cells involved in absorbing nutrients from the food. Animals identified as being "normal" brokens (having one copy of the gene for broken, and one for non-broken) were found to have somewhat fewer nerve cells than the animals with no copies of broken, but the other issues weren't seen in the normal brokens.
Essentially this study found that all Charlies are affected (in science, a 1-to-1 correlation leaves little room for misunderstanding what your data represents), so anyone that says otherwise is either uninformed or in denial.
As to whether your buck is a Charlie - most Charlies have small or absent nose markings, your boy looks like he has a whole butterfly. You can get brokens with very little color that aren't Charlies; if they have a parent or any offspring that aren't brokens, they can't be Charlies. Another clue is the droppings - IME, a normal broken will have poop that looks a bit like plain M&M's - slightly flattened and basically round. Charlies' poop is more like the peanut variety - rounded, but often different sizes and shapes.
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