Is God's grace unmerited? Absolutely! But the question isn't whether we merit God's gift (a gift, by definition, is not something that is owed), but whether God is caprecious and whether we have moral responsibility.
If God is not capricious, then He offers this gift to the whole world, as He repeatedly affirms throughout the Scripture. And if we have moral responsibility, then we have the free will to accept His gift of salvation or to turn it down--and many choose to turn it down. There is nothing irresistable about grace: As Stephen said in Acts 7, there are some who always resist the Holy Spirit.
God of course is outside of time and foreknows who will accept this gift. If He did not, then some who would receive His gift and His love would by simple chance and circumstance, from the accident of their birth and geography, never know it, and God does not desire that any should perish, but that all would receive eternal life. He also foreknows who will never accept Him through His Son, but it's not like He capreciously prevents those who would accept His gift from doing so, overriding the free will that He gave them and treating them as toys and puppets. That is not the God of the Bible, but the Allah of Mohammed!
So His election comes after their choosing? Isn't that a bit like sending in your absentee ballot on December 2nd? And the "elect" chose out of free will, so there was no predestination (before the foundation of the world) involved, contrary to Romans 8?
Please read ahead one more chapter to Romans 9, and explain the potter analogies in the light of your foreknowledge-first-then-election claim.
Do you think God knew who would receive Christ prior to creating the universe, before space/time, before the first molecule?