It’s a feature (or bug)of US democracy that one of its primary values, its reason for existing, is to support individuals and their freedom. Individuals are the values.

> the primary issue is that the US still has people on it

This is hardly unique.

> In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals

The world's oldest (Britain, Iceland) and largest (India, America) democracies have people on their currencies.

Democracies are a human institution. It's dangerous to forget that.

And people seem to forget that the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It's a democratic republic that is becoming more and more republic-like than democratic-like.

More and more compared to when?

Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate.

Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.

The U.S. is controlled by an ever shrinking collection of people and institutions, namely corporations and extremist groups. That's how it's more and more republic-like.

Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.