I'm not sure if this is truly a bug, but common sense tells me an <option> element should have a .val() method.

code sample:

$('[name="attr/ca_internal:string:ignore_empty"]').children().each(function()
       { 
            console.log(this.val());
            // console.log(this.attr('value'));
            $(this).css( {"background-color":"Black", "color":"White"} );
       });

Selectors matches a <select> element, then need to process each option value to define a corresponding style.

Uncaught TypeError: Object #<HTMLOptionElement> has no method 'val'

and trying to bypass .val() call by using .attr('value') method gives this:

Uncaught TypeError: Object #<HTMLOptionElement> has no method 'attr'

Sorry, jsfiddle is messed up by our corporate firewall (results in uneditable and unseen [HTML] field), so i have to post an example to jsbin: http://jsbin.com/adabol/1/edit