This has been a "feature" that many may have taken advantage of since it first appeared. 

It may have been trying to handle the case of "<option>foo bar </option>"  with putting in By("foo bar"); but unintended consequences allowed By("foo ") or By("bar ") to work appropriately too.  ~ craziness in my mind, but I don't think we should necessarily remove this "feature" because we have a better locator that effectively strips the trailing (or leading) spaces in the option element.