IOS Safari Selecting Multiple Options Visually For Single Select

I'm using this 'empty optgroup' workaround to get iOS to show option elements with long text in a readable manner. I'm using the following code to test this solution:

Choo

Solution 1:

I found this issue without the optgroup element, when I was programmatically re-populating and selecting a default item in a combo box, in response to another field changing. I found that I simply had to clear out the old selection first:

$("#time")[0].selectedIndex = -1 // this fixed it for me
$("#time option").each(function () {
        if ($(this).val() == oldtime) {
            $(this).attr("selected", "selected");
            return;
        }
});

Only Safari had this problem, it's clearly a bug that a single-select list can have two items visibly selected.