Setting hidden dropdown selected value causes page reload in iOS 11 safari

Here's my scenario. I'm using a bootstrap dropdown to create a fancy select menu. The actual <select>, used for validation and form post purposes, has it's visibility set to hidden. There is corresponding script to set the selected value of the <select> when the bootstrap dropdown <a> link is clicked.

Here's a snippet of my code.

<div class="dropdown dropdown-select">
    <button class="btn btn-default dropdown-toggle" id="cardSelector" type="button" 
        data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
        <span class="selected-value">- Select Credit Card -</span>
        <span class="fa fa-angle-down"></span>
    </button>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="cardSelector">
        <li data-bind="visible: model.HasValidCardOnFile()"><a href="#" data-value="1">- Existing Credit Card -</a></li>
        <li><a href="#" data-value="0">- New Credit Card -</a></li>
    </ul>
    @Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.CardTypeId, Model.GetCardTypeSelectList(),
        new { data_bind = "value: modelInput.CardTypeId", @class = "requires-validation" })
</div>
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.CardTypeId)

$(".dropdown-select").on('click', '.dropdown-menu a', function () {
    var $this = $(this);
    var $dropdownCtrl = $this.closest(".dropdown-select");
    $dropdownCtrl.find("select").val($this.data("value")).trigger("change");
    $dropdownCtrl.find(".selected-value").html($this.html());
    $dropdownCtrl.removeClass("open");
    return false;
});

The problem is that in iOS 11 safari, the page blows up with an error something like "An unexpected problem occurred. The page was reloaded."

I've traced it down to this bit of code $dropdownCtrl.find("select").val($this.data("value")). Setting the value is what causes the issue, I changed it to vanilla javascript and the error still occurred.

In testing I made the <select> visible and the issue went away. So it seems to be an issue specifically with changing the selected value of a <select> when it's not visible. I tried adding script to temporarily make it visible right before setting the selected value but this did not fix the issue, neither did changing the visibility and selecting the new value inside a setTimeout.